Introduction

The Impact Of Fear

It has been very hard for many of us to get back in the 'swing of things', as it were, over the last few weeks. I have personally been struggling with the issue of when and how to get back to contributing to Firing Squad, having been stricken by a flood of emotions, like many of us have. Throughout this time of mourning, I'm confident that many of us have experienced a wide range of emotions and for the first time may understand a little bit of what it is to feel the impact of such a devastating loss. We may not have been physically impacted by the events in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C., but regardless of our locality or nationality, our feelings are nevertheless quite palpable.

We may have entered a stage of shock and utter horror, then a stage of anger and resentment, and finally grief and a slow road to recovery rising just above the tide of turbulent range that stirs within us. It is at this stage where I find myself now. Reason is slowly finding its way back into my mind, and I am more aware of the things beyond my own emotion and response. So, in accordance with the wishes of our leaders and many of my fellow citizens, I am coming back to work. It will not all be peaches and cream, to coin a phrase, but it is one of the little things that I can do to help bring a small sense of normalcy to the world around me and my own life. Let us all stay strong and focused and help each other get back into a proud and uniform stride as we walk through our daily lives.

How We Respond In Crisis

One of the things that we hold dear throughout all of this will hopefully be our values. I find that people around me are now clinging to those things that they hold dear. Not just family and friends, but those beliefs in concepts that so many of us have taken for granted: Peace, Freedom and Rational Behavior. We seek to reconnect with these founding principles to perhaps find some level of reassurance and a road back to where we were before.

Yet there are some who are not able to make the move back so easily. The rage or fear that they feel is not as amenable to leaving their hearts as it has been in others, and as a result, there may be a period of time when we must tread with caution for fear of causing further turmoil in those still affected, those who are unable to swim up past the surface of the tide.

But as my mind begins to focus back on the tasks of daily life, I have been witness to some things that cause me alarm. When we are faced with crisis, fear and uncertainty, we have a tendency to look for reason behind it all and perhaps even someone to blame. We are used to living in a world where cause and effect reign supreme in our minds, where we can follow a logical path from the beginning to the end. In this case, I am afraid to say that there are those who are seeking to place blame where it does not belong. Their motives may be good, but in their need to try and make sense of it all and find causal connections, they have started to find blame in areas where it does not belong: The Entertainment Industry.

For the purposes of this article, I will seek to focus primarily on what is happening in the gaming industry, but given the amount of cross-over between gaming and general entertainment, we will be discussing a broader impact as well. Please take some time to read these opinions with an open mind and an understanding that the motivation here is to bring a level of attention and discussion to the table and not to be inflammatory. Our nation is founded on principles such as free speech, a point which I will try to convey here. But there is an area of gray between free speech and respectful speech, and I think that is the area where people are having trouble with.